Islamists Claim Win in Vote That Splits Egypt

Officials counted ballots after polls closed in Bani Sweif, about 70 miles south of Cairo, on Saturday.
Reuters

MINYA, Egypt—Egyptians girded for a new season of political discord after opposition leaders slammed a constitutional referendum they said was rigged by Islamists and that has unsettled the nation's Christian minority.

Islamist campaigners led by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood claimed an unofficial victory over the constitution on Sunday based on its observation of the vote count, a day after a second-round vote raised the total "yes" votes to about 64%. The government didn't say when it would release official results.

ENLARGE

Women attending a class last week in a church in Assiut, a village in a region where many Christians live.
Associated Press

The National Salvation Front, a coalition of political parties and former presidential candidates that represents the opposition, issued a stinging retort on Sunday that pinned the vote's results on widespread "falsifications, violations and breaches of organization."

But the opposition stopped short of calling for a rerun vote as it did after the first round last week, and seemed to accept the results. After a month of protests, Cairo's streets were mostly quiet Sunday.

The divisive politics now look set to persist as Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi guides his country toward new parliamentary elections within two months. Despite their complaints over the political process, the National Salvation Front pledged to participate in parliamentary polls.

Newly united and backed by street-level activism, the group said it would continue as a political umbrella group to exploit the Islamists' declining poll numbers since the revolution began two years ago.

The Islamist-leaning democracy emerging from Egypt's disorder has isolated one group more than most. Members of Egypt's main minority, Christians, which make up more than 10% of the country's 83 million population, say they feel increasingly excluded by Egyptian politics' sharp tack toward Islamism.

"In the beginning, after the revolution, we all went out to vote," said Maged Fawzi Farweez, a Christian who voted "no" in the second round of the referendum on Saturday. "But over and over, we feel as though our voices go to waste. That's why many of us don't go anymore."

Mr. Farweez lives in Bayadaya, one of a constellation of small, almost exclusively Christian villages that surround the southern Egyptian city of Minya.

Egypt's Christians, who are overwhelmingly Coptics, are integrated into the wider Muslim majority, but are thought to comprise about one third some southern cities's populations.

Egypt's revolution has been hard on its Christians. Sectarian clashes, the abrupt rise of Islamist politicians and the mainstream perception that the Christian community supports former President Hosni Mubarak have frightened the once apolitical community. Many Christians say they feel that they can't speak out for fear of being labeled as traitors.

The handful of Christians present on the constitution-drafting committee joined about two dozen other secular-leaning delegates in withdrawing last month, shortly before the document was passed. Their absence allowed Islamists to push through the controversial document, whose passage was all but guaranteed Sunday.

Even the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood contributed to sectarian tensions recently. Mohammed Al Biltagi, a widely respected Brotherhood reformer, sparked outrage when he told television audiences that 60% of the draft panel's opponents were Christians.

"That's going to have long-lasting reverberations," said Michael Hanna, an Egyptian-American Christian and an expert on Egypt at the New York-based Century Foundation. "When the Brotherhood are engaged in this, it emboldens the right even more. That's a dangerous dynamic to introduce."

In Minya, the Christians' clout is eclipsed by hard-line Islamists who have grown in power since the fall of Mr. Mubarak and his secularist regime early last year. Minya is the birthplace of the former militant group Al Gama'a Al Islamiya, and some of the group's leaders returned there after their release from prison following the revolt. During moments of heightened political tension, the organization has staged thousands-strong rallies in a show of force.

On Friday, the day before the referendum vote, Al Gama'a Al Islamiyya members rode on flatbed trucks mounted with flags and speakers while shouting anti-Christian slogans.

Many of Egypt's Christians say they were intimidated by Islamists. At polling stations, some Christians said they found their names weren't listed. In other cases, they said, poll managers wouldn't let them in.

Nabil Gameel, a leader in the Brotherhood's Minya branch, said reports of voting violations amounted to little more than fabrications by a traitorous media working to unsettle Egypt. "We are all united and we all love each other," Mr. Gameel said. "But there are people who want to come between us, like these opposition, who claim to be the nation's protectors."

Many voters refused to speak to the media for fear of retaliation. But their stories appear to have already cowed many Christians from participating in the polls. Residents of Baladaya estimated that fewer than 10% of eligible Christian voters participated Saturday.

"Islamists are trying to change the country into an Islamic country—not just an Islamic country, but an ignorant country," said Tony Saleeb, a Christian and an election observer for the Cairo-based Egyptian Center for Human Rights. "I expect that in the near future there will be severe violence."

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.